To Kill a Mockingbird Essay – Racism and PrejudiceHarper Lee uses her book To Kill a Mockingbird to explore two major issues; racism and prejudice. Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. The issue of racism is explored through Tom Robinson and his court case, where Tom Robinson; a black man; was accused of raping a white girl, he is convicted purely because he is a black man and his accuser is white. Harper Lee uses Tom’s court case and the symbol of the mockingbird to explore the issue of racism. Prejudice is making a judgement or assumption about someone or something before having enough knowledge to be able to do so with guaranteed accuracy. Harper also uses Boo Radley to express the issue of prejudice; Harper expresses this through the way the town judges Boo Radley, before they even know him, they assume he is some crazy mean psychopath who stays inside all the time and never shows his face outside, where in fact he is not mean, or crazy in any way and also saves the lives of Jem and Scout. These issues are explored further throughout the novel. Racism is commonly portrayed throughout the novel, Harper Lee uses many different situations and events in the novel, to discuss the issues of racism. Through the symbol of the mockingbird, Harper Lee expresses the issue of racism with the mockingbird as a symbol of racism. As Ms Maudie explains to scout how it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird, Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird. Pg 99-100. Ms Maudie explains to Scout here, killing a mockingbird is a sin, as the mockingbirds don’t do anything wrong they just sing and make music for people without causing any harm, just like the issue of racism. People disapprove of negros when they do nothing wrong. This is portrayed...

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...Inappropriate Content within Books
To Kill a MockingbirdEssay Assignment
ENG 1D1 03
Alex Gardner
December 2010
Mr. Przemieniecki
Inappropriate content within books
There are many different books that are studied in schools, but one should be removed from shelves. Students should not be reading about certain subject matters until they are fully invested into that specific subject. Certain inappropriate topics are racism and dated subject matter. The book, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, should be removed from school shelves because of its dated subject matter, difficult plot and offensive terms.
To Kill a Mockingbird displays very dated subject matter which is one of the many reasons that it should be removed from school shelves. Students would rather read a book in regard to present time or a book written at a different time that they are still able to relate to. To Kill a Mockingbird is not relevant to students today as it was based in the 1930’s. “ I’d hate to see Harry Johnson’s face when he gets in from the Mobile run and finds Atticus Finch’s shot his dog.” (Lee 101) Now, people would just call animal control. The main problematic theme within the story is racism. Scout feels the need to ask her father, “Do you defend niggers, Atticus?”(Lee 79) In the 1900’s, racism was a huge issue in the United States, among other...

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Prejudice Can Kill
“ A black man’s life is worth more than a white man’s.” This saying is referring to a certain type of prejudice known as racism. Racism is also a main theme that Harper lee brings across in the novel because it is set in the south part of The United States in a time where white people were considered superior to black people. Prejudice can be defined as a preconceived opinion not based on reason or experience; therefore it is not limited to only racism. In the novel To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee shows the awful effects that prejudice can have on people. She builds up the characters in a favorable manner and links the theme of prejudice to the meaning of the title. To kill a mocking bird is referring to the harming of someone or something that never does anything bad to you or anyone and sometimes even does good. This is linked with prejudice because the people who are mockingbirds in the novel are also the people who are victims of prejudice. She mainly shows the effect that prejudice has on Arthur Radley (Boo), Atticus Finch, and Tom Robinson.
Firstly, a main character that is badly affected by the prejudice of Maycomb is Boo Radley, who we are introduced to at the beginning of the novel. The whole town of Maycomb considers Boo Radley to be a monster because of a certain incident.
“ According to Miss...

...To Kill a MockingbirdEssay
“And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”-Marianne Williamson
This quote makes evident the need of self-respect to respond to injustice, as through our examples and actions, we let others gain their self-respect and help them realize any injustices they may have done or supported, and liberate them from racism and prejudice. In terms of the novel, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, the self-respect in characters such as Atticus, Scout and Boo shine, and unconsciously free others of their unjust views and beliefs, while at the least, making others admire the respect they have towards others and themselves. In “To Kill a Mockingbird’, Harper Lee develops the characters of Atticus, Scout, and Tom to show the reader that an individual who possesses a high level of self-respect will recognize injustice and act against it.
In “To Kill a Mockingbird’, Atticus is constantly finding himself dealing with problems and troubles within both his household and his hometown of Maycomb. Throughout the length of the novel, Atticus deals with every challenge or problem with integrity, respect, and wisdom. Doing so not only makes him a well respected man, but a role model for his children, and for many...

...To Kill A MockingbirdEssay
12/6/11
Wayne Dyer once said, “Judgments prevent us from seeing the good that lie beyond appearances.” With judgment as a reoccurring theme, Harper Lee's novel, To Kill a Mockingbird consists of great resemblances between the characters Boo Radley and Tom Robinson. In the novel, killing amockingbird is considered a symbol of destruction of innocence. Many “mockingbirds” exist in the story, which takes place in the Deep South in the town of Maycomb, Alabama during the 1930’s. The novel depicts the life of its young narrator Jean Louise "Scout" Finch and the events surrounding a trial for Tom Robinson, an African American man, falsely convicted and killed by his racist community. Boo Radley is a shy and innocent man unfairly judged and shunned by his neighbors. Boo Radley and Tom Robinson come from very different backgrounds considering one lives in isolation with his taciturn brother and the other is a Negro who lives with his wife and children among friends. As the story progresses, the reader can notice how Tom and Boo are more similar than it appears and how they resemble mockingbirds as described by Harper Lee. Both are good men who are put down because of their “differences” from the other townspeople of Maycomb. By looking at the...

...﻿The Play of “To Kill a Mockingbird” – Paragraph Plan for Critical Essay
Task: Choose a play in which a character shows commitment to principles, ideals and individuals despite difficulties he encounters.
Show what difficulties the character encounters and explain why he remains committed.
A play in which a character shows commitment is the play of “To Kill a Mockingbird”, based on the novel by Harper Lee and dramatised by Christopher Sergel. The play, set in the American Deep South of the 1930, is about a white lawyer, Atticus Finch, who encounters difficulties in the form of prejudice and hatred when he decides to defend a black man called Tom Robinson, accused of sexually assaulting a white woman. This essay will show how Atticus remains committed to his principles, ideals and individuals in the play by exploring setting, characterisation and key incidents.
The difficulties the main character encounters are rooted in the setting of the play. The action takes place in a village called Maycomb, a “tired old town” dominated by poverty, in Alabama in 1935. Racism was entrenched in the Deep South at the time and is highlighted in the frequent use of the highly offensive term “nigger” by the townspeople. Atticus is aware that his defence of a black man will create conflict for him and his family and reminds his children “We will be fighting our friends”, preparing them for a potential...

...Practice Essay
Cultural values and social practices change and evolve over time.
Cultural values and social practices inevitably over time as individuals and societies are subject to change with it. In the timeless bildungsroman novel, “To Kill A Mockingbird” (1960) written by Harper Lee, it explores the confronting experiences of a young child, living in a world of racism, injustice and disability. In a more modern context, however, the novel “The Family Law” (2009) written by Benjamin Law, is a hilarious memoir describing the quirky and “stranger-than-fiction” family circumstances that he and his family lived through. Both of these texts vividly describe their culture values and practices, and looking at it from a 21st century, modern perspective, we can see how much these morals and principles have changed.
The novel, “To Kill A Mockingbird” is set in a town called Maycomb in Alabama in the 1930s and is a story about racism, injustice and empathy through the eyes of a young girl, Scout Finch. Scout is nearly six years old when the novel starts, and she lives with her brother Jem and her widowed father Atticus, who is a lawyer. In the novel, the Maycomb society is extremely rigid, conservative and unjust in terms of race and class. Any person who is black or is associated with blacks were looked down upon, and it is just assumed that “that all Negroes lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral...

...﻿To Kill A Mocking Bird
By Harper Lee
In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, a well respected lawyer named Atticus Finch agrees to defend a black man named Tom Robinson who has been accused of raping a white woman. Despite being scolded by the racist Maycomb community Atticus defends Mr. Robinson because he believes in justice and strives to prove the innocence of a black man unjustly accused of this crime. This novel depicts what it was like to live in a racist white community in the 1930s during the Depression era. During this time the South was still segregated and the blacks and whites had separate facilities. The Civil Rights Movement began to move forward when a black woman named Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Alabama. Shortly after that Martin Luther King Jr. became a predominate leader in this movement and eventually his efforts reached the goal of equality. In today’s society whites and blacks are both deemed equal because of all the efforts of the civil rights movement.
Atticus and his children face harsh criticism in Maycomb because he decided to take Mr. Robinson’s case. Atticus takes the case because he knows that Mr. Robinson is innocent even though there is such a slight chance of the case being acquitted due to the fact that the jury is all white. Another underlying reason Atticus took this case was because he wanted to reveal the truth to the community as well as encourage them...

...An Introduction to To Kill A Mockingbird
To Kill a Mockingbird, written by Harper Lee in 1960, has become one of the most significant classic books in American Literature. The book starts with Scout being in adult, looking back to her life: her father, Atticus and his trial, her brother Jem, and her strange, mistaken neighbor, “Boo” Radley. To Kill a Mockingbird contains two plots that tie together at the end. The first plot is the story about her weird neighbor, Boo, who is believed to be bullied by his father and lives a remote life in his shuttered house. Scout and Jem lunch many adventures in order to discover the identity, the real fear that hides under that mysterious house, only to find out that Boo is a hero to their life, especially to Scout. The second plot centers on the trial of a black man, Tom Robinson, who is falsely accused of raping a white woman. Atticus tries his best to defend the innocent man in the prejudiced, biased world. Nevertheless, the client is hanged due to the injustice of the society of Maycomb town.
After its publication in 1960, To Kill a Mockingbird earns much acclaims for its moral impacts. There are two main themes in this powerful novel: tolerance and integrity. When Scout discovers who Boo Radley actually is, she has great empathy and tolerance to him. The novel also emphasizes the importance of integrity in court system....